1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to information handling systems (IHS) and in particular to failure detection and recovery within information handling systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continue to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system (IHS) generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
IHSes typically include I/O network interface controllers (NICs). These NICs also include single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) capable NIC cards. These SR-IOV capable NIC cards are shared across multiple Virtual Machines (VMs). A VM is directly connected to the I/O device so that the main data movement, which requires increased processor utilization, can occur without involvement of a virtualization manager or hypervisor.
Many solutions are available for external network failover monitoring and switchover. Similar approaches have generally been applied to internal data path failover, which is as important for data centers as is external network failover. These conventional approaches include NIC teaming supported by an aggregation control protocol. However, the legacy failover mechanism used in NIC teaming and which utilizes the aggregation control protocol or other protocols utilized to support “port trunking” or “link bundling” doesn't support a failover mechanism for a single SR-IOV having a single port or multiple ports. The legacy failover mechanism supports two SR-IOV adaptors. For example, in this case, the legacy mechanism involves switching from one SR-IOV card (i.e., 256 light weight PCIe devices, VF devices) to another SR-IOV card (i.e., 256 light weight PCIe devices, VF devices). This failover mechanism which involves switching from one NIC card to another is a very costly failover approach.